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A Bird in a Guilty Cage
A Bird in a Guilty Cage is a 1952 Looney Tunes short directed by Friz Freleng. Title The title is a play on the 1900 song "A Bird in a Gilded Cage". Plot Sylvester is at a store called Stacy's (a spoof of Macy's), where he notices Tweety in the window stand. Going through the package slot, he closes the curtains and climbs up to Tweety's cage, who asks him what he's going to do. After asiding to the audience, "How naive can ya get?", Sylvester replies that they're going to play a game called Sandwich, involving Tweety getting sandwiched in two pieces of bread and nearly eaten ("I don't like dat game!") Tweety flees, with Sylvester in hot pursuit. The cat is forced to stack mannequins on top of each other to reach the canary, who is hiding in the lighting. Tweety climbs down and puts skates on the mannequin statue, causing Sylvester to crash down some stairs. He returns, however, and the chase resumes, leading him to a hat sale, where he begins trying on hats. He finds the one with Tweety on top, and tries to smash him, instead hitting himself. Tweety then hides in a dollhouse, which eventually ends with Sylvester shooting his own finger. A final sequence involves a gun in a hole gag, where as Sylvester shoves his gun in a hole in the wall, another is aimed at his rear. Predictably, this ends in Sylvester getting his buttocks shot. Tweety then goes through the piping system, with Sylvester going to the other end to catch him. However, Tweety comes out a different hole, and puts a stick of dynamite in. Sylvester swallows it, thinking he has gotten Tweety, but as he strolls out, it explodes, leaving him blackened. He then decides to cross off birds from his diet ("That one sort of upset my stomach!"). Availability * (1992) VHS - Sylvester and Tweety: The Best Yeows of Our Lives * (1993) LaserDisc - Sylvester and Tweety's Bad Ol' Putty Tat Blues * (2001) DVD - I Love Tweety: Volume 3 * (2004) DVD - Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 2, Disc Three Censorship * On ABC, the gun-in-one-end-and-out-the-other gag also used in "A Star Is Bored" and "Tease for Two" was edited to remove Sylvester shooting himself in the butt. The sound was left intact, but the actual scene was replaced with a shot of Tweety getting out of the hole in the wall. Also cut was the entire sequence where Sylvester uses his hand to chase Tweety through a dollhouse and mistakenly shoots his finger after Tweety splatters yellow paint on it.http://www.intanibase.com/gac/looneytunes/censored-b.aspx * The CBS version left the gun-in-one-end-and-out-the-other gag uncut and showed most of the dollhouse sequence, but the dollhouse sequence was still edited to remove the part where Sylvester shoots his own finger, thinking it's Tweety. Notes/Goofs * The gun in a hole gag is reused in the opening titles of Revenge of the Pink Panther. Here, the animated version of Clouseau points his gun into the gap in the 'A' while another comes out of the 'P'. Predictably, it ends with Clouseau being shot in the face. Prior to that, the same gag has been reused in "A Star Is Bored" and "Tease for Two" and was used in a Cartoon Network station ID bumper in the early 2000s (see "Censorship" for details). * The famous lots-of-doors in-and-out routine (a routine associated with the 1960s animated TV series Scooby Doo, Where Are You? and its myriad spin-offs and remakes) in the dollhouse was previously used in "Little Red Riding Rabbit" and "Buccaneer Bunny", and both of those cartoons were also directed by Freleng. * This is one of the three Tweety & Sylvester cartoons where Sylvester crosses birds out from his diet list, while the other two are "Tweet Zoo" and "Trip for Tat". ** Unlike the latter two cartoons where Sylvester crosses birds out from his diet list, in this one he did so because the "bird" he ate (which actually was a stick of dynamite) had "upset is stomach". * In this cartoon, Sylvester is aware about Tweety's naivete that he could use to his advantage, evidenced when he asides the audience "How naive can ya get?" * Starting with this cartoon, the "MPPDA" bug in the credits was updated to get new lettering that said "MPAA"; the cartoon following this, "Mouse-Warming", would be the last one to use the "MPPDA" version of the bug. * This was also one of many cartoons that didn't have a production number listed below "Present" Other Cartoons that didn't have this were "Ain't She Tweet", "Homeless Hare", "A Peck O' Trouble", "The Grey-Hounded Hare", "Sock-a-Doodle-Doo", and "Leghorn Swoggled" References Category:Sylvester Cartoons Category:Tweety Cartoons Category:Shorts Category:Cartoons directed by Friz Freleng Category:Looney Tunes Shorts Category:Blue Ribbon reissues Category:1952 Category:Cartoons with film editing by Treg Brown Category:Cartoons with sound effects edited by Treg Brown Category:Cartoons with orchestrations by Milt Franklyn Category:Cartoons written by Warren Foster Category:Cartoons with layouts by Hawley Pratt Category:Cartoons with backgrounds by Irv Wyner Category:Cartoons with music by Carl W. Stalling Category:Cartoons produced by Eddie Selzer Category:Cartoons with characters voiced by Mel Blanc